Paper Tigers

Sun Jan 18 2004

As part of my preparation to go back to the City, I decided to sit down and do something I've been dreading: go through my old Moleskine notebook (namesake brand of this weblog) to cull useless pages, read over old notes and annotate, mostly to decide whether I should keep this journal or start a new one when I get back to Chicago.1 I'm gonna start a new one, as once my editing was done, I'd taken a very noticeable chunk out of the center of the notebook, which threw off the way it lays flat on a surface. Which, of course, won't do at all.

It's a shame what I let happen to my moleskine: having filled it with anti-Jennyisms that I then saw fit to cut out in much the same way I cut out the real Jenny, I started using it as a class notebook. And not even a good class!.2

There are some interesting ideas for stories in there, though, and I marked them with a highlighter when I thought there was something worth exploring. There were copious notes about my stillborn romantic comedy (that I may now finally be back in the mood to write), my Matrix ripoff with a title stolen from The Sandman and a central mythology stolen from Paradise Lost, my postmodern reimagining3 of The Third Man...

It is the stated opinion of certain family members (COUGH my mother COUGH COUGH) that I am a much stronger critical writer than fiction writer, which I'm not sure I can argue with. I would argue that I'm a stronger movie producer than an editor, a stronger editor than writer, and a stronger writer than director, but that's just my ever-fallible self-analysis. The point is, in this notebook I see imagination I had forgotten I had, which is a lovely thing to look over now that things are quieter.

I started this entry intending only to post, uselessly, that I had gotten my laptop and cellphone talking via Bluetooth, which makes it possible for me to blog/e-mail/look at porn from literally anywhere. (I've got your Wi-Fi right here, fuckers!!!) However, I decided to take the opportunity to, you know, actually write.

1 While I found pocket-size Moleskines at Books & Company here in Birmingham, I know of only two places that carry the full-size version I use for my journal: a lovely stationer's on Rue Chartres in 'Nawlins whose name I have completely forgotten (Typographica?), and The Art Store in Chicago. I am certain that there are other places, like the other stores in the Art Store chain, and finer stationery stores for whom the Moleskine ($13.95 for less than 200 leaves) would be their low-end, mass-market product. But those are the only two I know about.

2 I did manage to make one decent note in my poor, ravaged notebook about that class. The teacher (who shall remain nameless) was rambling about something or other, as was his wont, and I wrote:

This man's relationships must be hell.

3 Read: ripoff.